Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and More from CRS
Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following (all pdf).
“Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty: Issues and Arguments,” February 28, 2008.
“Fusion Centers: Issues and Options for Congress,” updated January 18, 2008.
“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: A Brief Overview of Selected Issues,” updated February 8, 2008.
“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: Comparison of House-Passed H.R. 3773, S. 2248 as Reported By the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and S. 2248 as Reported Out of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” updated February 8, 2008.
“Operation Iraqi Freedom: Strategies, Approaches, Results, and Issues for Congress,” February 22, 2008.
“Defense Contracting in Iraq: Issues and Options for Congress,” updated January 29, 2008.
“FY2009 Defense Budget: Issues for Congress,” February 11, 2008.
The current lack of public trust in AI risks inhibiting innovation and adoption of AI systems, meaning new methods will not be discovered and new benefits won’t be felt. A failure to uphold high standards in the technology we deploy will also place our nation at a strategic disadvantage compared to our competitors.
Using the NIST as an example, the Radiation Physics Building (still without the funding to complete its renovation) is crucial to national security and the medical community. If it were to go down (or away), every medical device in the United States that uses radiation would be decertified within 6 months, creating a significant single point of failure that cannot be quickly mitigated.
The federal government can support more proactive, efficient, and cost-effective resiliency planning by certifying predictive models to validate and publicly indicate their quality.
We need a new agency that specializes in uncovering funding opportunities that were overlooked elsewhere. Judging from the history of scientific breakthroughs, the benefits could be quite substantial.